The Beginning Of The End Of US Involvement In Afghanistan

President Obama's policy in Afghanistan has been described as
"Hello,
I must be going." When he announced the US troop surge
in the fall of 2009, he
also announced the date that the US would begin to draw down
its forces. The specific date he announced for the draw down to
commence was July 2011. That's two months from
today.

The execution of Osama bin Laden and his posse in Abbottabad,
Pakistan, makes it much easier, politically, to make "Hello, I
must be going" a coherent, even popular, policy. American public
opinion has
grown weary of the Afghan war. Now that Osama lies at the
bottom of the Arabian Sea, public opinion will likely endorse the
idea -- first expressed by Vermont Senator George Aiken in the
context of the Vietnam War -- of declaring victory in Afghanistan
and getting out.

The fact is that no vital US interest is at stake in
Afghanistan. We have a huge national interest in making
sure that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal does not fall into the wrong
hands. The best way to make our Pakistan policy coherent is
to disengage from Afghanistan, thus denying Pakistan the leverage
(military supply lines, etc) that has made the relationship so
treacherous since 2002. Absent that leverage, Pakistan will
finally have to make its choice: an alliance with the US or the
tactical benefits of the various Talibans it sponsors. It's long
since past the time that they be forced to choose.

President Obama, in the wake of the bin Laden raid, has the
electorate's broad political permission to reconfigure American
foreign policy in the Middle East and Central Asia. He
would be well-advised to end the ill-conceived Libyan
intervention as quickly as possible, wind down Afghanistan as
quickly as possible, maintain the US military presence in Iraq
for the medium term and focus on what matters: (1) containment of
Iran, (2) Egypt's transition and (3) the stabilization of Syria.
Central Asia
could use some benign US neglect. The public will support all
of this.

Republicans, likely, will not. They will find pieces of the
puzzle to be ill-fitting or insufficiently muscular. This
will be help President Obama. It will allow him to engage the
Republicans on the issue, with public opinion on his side.
Politicians pray for issues where their view conforms to the
public view and their opponents argue to the contrary.

If the Republicans were smart, they would embrace "Hello, I must
be going" in Central Asia and pre- endorse a Presidential policy
shift. If the GOP agrees, the issue is rendered moot.
For the foreseeable future, Afghanistan will likely be a net
political plus for President Obama. The less the GOP talks
about it, the better for them politically.

The focus of the cable news shows and the 24/7 media is whether
President Obama gets a polling "bounce" from the bin Laden
raid. That's irrelevant. What he gets is
latitude to act. If he uses it wisely, positive
poll numbers will follow. But he has to move fast. It has
to be something people can see; boots on the ground at Fort Bragg
and Fort Hood.